Galaxy Digital Bets $5 Million on Bitcoin's Quantum Safety

Galaxy Digital has committed $5 million to help Bitcoin prepare for a potential quantum attack. The timing of this effort is crucial, as the worst-case scenario suggests that Q-Day could arrive as early as 2033.

The exposed pool of vulnerable coins is estimated to be around 6.9 million BTC, roughly one-third of circulating supply. This is due to old pay-to-public-key addresses and address reuse, which have left public keys visible on the blockchain.

Galaxy's Quantum Advisory Council includes experts such as Barry Sanders and Eran Tromer, who will help guide the development of quantum-resistant transaction proposals and post-quantum signature schemes. The grants will be awarded against milestones rather than upfront checks, to ensure that the work is completed efficiently.

The main proposal being targeted by Galaxy's grants is BIP-360, which proposes a soft fork to add a new output type similar to Taproot but removes key-path spend. While this will help reduce long public-key exposure, full quantum safety still depends on adopting post-quantum signature algorithms and getting wallets and custodians to migrate.

Bitcoin's lack of an agency head means that it cannot issue directives for a transition to post-quantum cryptography like governments can. It is up to the community to build consensus early or risk discovering too late that their timeline was fantasy.